Men at Attention, Women at Ease

Men at Attention, Women at Ease

By hughgee

She was a tough woman. She was a very tough woman. But that wasn’t why Commander Stryker held back from the squat, rolly-polly Sgt. Davies who came to retrieve him to the lab. Reason was, he knew what this possibly meant. He had asked not to be disturbed in his quarters not twenty minutes ago. But the message the brassy, pug-nosed, feminine bowling ball brought with her was urgent—and it was from Dr. Moriarty herself.

He knew what Moriarty had been working on. It was a long-shot, it could never really work, but for this message to be so labeled, well, he knew Moriarty was not the excitable type. Far from it: she’d rebuffed his sexual advances several times over the course of their year of working together as coolly, as clinically, as if she was viewing a specimen of amoeba under a microscope whenever he’d pressed himself close and she’d been forced to stop her work and reluctantly look up at him. She was a beautiful cold fish, he’d told himself, whom the army had pulled out of some hole in the ice and handed the position of head scientist over the Advance in Non-Lethal Weapons in the Hands of Military Police program—ANaLWiMP, for short.

The ANaLWiMP program had been studying a theory of the effects of certain low-frequency sound waves on the human body. In a year’s time the program had accomplished nothing, nothing to justify its enormous defense expenditures. Everyone from Moriarty to Commander Stryker on down knew the budget was running out. Pretty soon they’d be back to more realistic means of stopping criminals—refinement of the tried and true night stick, softer, less deadly rubber bullets, a more glutinous quick-drying foam to spray on criminals to stop them in their tracks. But this note meant something, or else Moriarty would never have sent for the Commander in the middle of lunch and attached such urgency. Or else maybe she’d finally had enough and swooned for his machismo style. Yes, maybe. A definite maybe.

Sgt. Davies led the way through the swinging doors like a nurse pushing a gurney. Stryker followed close at her heels. He was a middle age bachelor, a playboy. Never could he get the notion of a next conquest out of his mind. This was why he watched even the Sergeant’s jostling rump along the way. He squinted, grinded his teeth, as he saw the two giant hindquarters bump and grind up and down as Davies’ ultra-wide hips swayed side to side like a covered, camouflaged, life-sized Liberty Bell being rung again and again. He was the Alpha male, he thought. He’d have a piece of this Omega tail. Someday, someday, he thought. Piss on Anita Hill, if they were going to be in the army, he had a right to such ogling. He walked, he watched. Damn blubber butt, mused the Commander. Still, he knew it wasn’t all blubber. That thing was part solid, almost equestrian. A middle-aged woodie made for an increasingly stiff-legged gait.

“Doctor, here is the Commander,” Sgt. Davies said at last, and Commander Stryker awoke from his lustful reverie surprised to suddenly be in the presence of the bespectacled, bob-cutted, high-cheeked intellectual Moriarty who’d been so resistant to his home run moves for so long. Still, something about Moriarty made him shrivel up in her presence and this was what he felt happening now underneath his pants suit.

“Commander, I’ve got something for you to see,” the Doctor began.

“This had better be good, baby doll” retorted Stryker, archly setting down his hat and acting more put out than he really was. He loved demeaning female subordinates and he particularly loved talking this way to Moriarty. He was the Alpha Male at Camp Reynholt.

Moriarty continued in her typically clipped and clinical fashion. “We’ve come up with a few sound waves in the negative 10.09 to the negative 11.07 range frequency that seems to have a certain effect on a certain part of the body.”

“Well, what have you got, sister?” he demanded, crossing his arms in an air of exaggerated disbelief. He was really upset she hadn’t gone out with him, hadn’t said Yes to him for one lousy date this whole year. She must be, he thought. She’s a lesbian. How else could she have resisted him this long?

She laid her hand on a square box contraption on the table in front of her, one end raised up by a couple of small, makeshift wooden blocks the size of two new pads of Post-Its. The thing was gun metal gray with slits or what might be air vents cut in the sides. The apparatus had a small, black, round lens-like extension and looked for all the world like a routine classroom slide-projector.

“I’m calling it a disgroinificator,” she quipped, a trill of irony to her voice. She wasn’t capable of irony, thought Stryker. He’d thought Moriarty incapable of the most mundane of human emotions. An hour-glassed cyborg with puffy, sleepy-looking, garnet-stone lips.

“Disgronificator?” he corrected, or thought he was correcting. Sgt. Davies, standing straight off to the side with all her squat bulk, let out a huff of sarcastic amusement. Stryker was just about to call Davies on this act of inappropriate temerity—it would give him a chance to talk to a female the way he liked to talk to a female, the way he knew, or thought he knew, they liked to be talked to, when—

“No,” Moriarty shot back. “It’s a disgroinificator. Are you watching?” She motioned to the pane of glass housing the experimental sound studio. It was a two-way mirror, four feet high, eight feet wide. Behind it one could see the sound studio, vaguely dark inside, the size of a walk-in closet. Stryker could well make out the shape of a well-built, khakied young man standing out, at ramrod attention, hands at his sides.

“Who’s he?”

“Cadet Matthews. Volunteer,” the Doctor answered distractedly. She was carefully fingering what looked like a dial at the back of the contraption. Then, pressing what looked like a button of some sort, and throwing a glance over at Sgt. Davies, Dr. Moriarty added, “Power up.” It bothered Stryker, that look she gave Davies. It was a knowing look, like the two were in on some secret. He’d question her about it later; maybe even excoriate her, if everything went his way. Subordinates keeping secrets from him? Not in his army.

“You will notice Cadet Matthews beginning to show a minor hint of discomfort,” the Doctor stoically narrated. Peering through the two-way mirror, Stryker duly noted this. A slight grimace had begun to form on the young cadet’s countenance and his stiff stance had begun to quiver perceptibly. Stryker noticed the round lens-like extension of the apparatus was pointed toward the withering cadet.

“It has a range of 50 kilometers,” continued Dr. Moriarty, methodically, “a horizontal span of yet unmeasured proportions. This of course depends on the distance and the focus of the beam.”

The Commander looked nonplussed.

“Sound waves,” she said, busy adjusting something on the machine.

Stryker was running out of patience. He never had a lot of it around women who weren’t putting out. “Uh, am I missing something here, Doctor? What’s supposed to be happening?”

The Doctor and Sgt. Davies exchanged glances once more, much to the annoyance of the Commander. Turning back to her invention, the Doctor continued. “I have the Disgroinificator set to minimum volume at the moment. I will now increase the volume. Please observe the reactions of the cadet.”

She reached and with a sparkle of decorated pink acrylic nails adjusted a knob behind the contraption. Stryker was just about to mutter the words “I still don’t hear anything, Doctor” when he was stopped short by an agonized groan from behind the pane of glass. Turning to look, the Commander saw Cadet Matthews bending over, knees knocking together, as though he had just received a sound kick to the groin.

“Oh-HO-oh-HO-oh-HO-ohhhhhh,” the man groaned towards the ground. A moment later he was down.

“He’s away from the beam,” said Doctor Moriarty. “He should begin to recover in the normal amount of time. Sgt. Davies, would you be so kind as to tend to the cadet’s discomfort?”

With a chuckle that further annoyed Stryker, the Sergeant. exited the room.

“Low frequency sound waves, Commander,” Moriarty began clinically explaining.

“Inaudible to the human ear. Experimentation has shown that certain nerve endings of the anatomy are quite susceptible to these sound waves when broadcast within a certain spectrum of the known sound continuum.”

“You wanna gimme that in plain English, Doc?” demanded Stryker.

“We can stop an assailant or enemy combatant dead in his tracks without resorting to lethal force, and much more effective than any non-lethal devices yet devised.”

Commander Stryker took a gander in the other room and saw Sgt. Davies helping Cadet Matthews to his feet. The young man was drooping at all angles and were it not for the robustness of the female Sergeant; he’d have dropped back down to a fetal position. He saw Davies lead the cadet gingerly out of the room, one arm draped over her shoulder, his other hand cupping his groin. Stryker turned back to the Doctor, brightening suddenly.

“This is fantastic!” he beamed. “You mean to tell me if the G-men had this sucker, they wouldn’t’ve had to fill Bonnie and Clyde’s car full of holes?”

“Well,” began Dr. Moriarty, raising her eyebrows at this. “They still would’ve had to shoot Bonnie.”

“What?”

“The pubic ventricle nerve has so far been the only nerve ending shown to be sensitive enough to be effected. The male is the only one who possesses the pubic ventricle nerve.”

It was now an astonished, rather than curious, “What?” which burst forth from Commander Stryker’s fallen mouth.

“It would seem the other nerve endings in the body sensitive enough to be deleteriously effected by the disgroinificator’s emission are sufficiently protected by sebaceous layers—by fat.” The Doctor paused to see the effect her words were having on the stunned Commander before continuing. “It would seem the scrotal sacrum is not sufficient insulation against invasive sound of this frequency. It’s the only place on the human anatomy where a nerve of such gross sensitivity is so exposed. Hence, it is only the male which finds the beam of the disgroinificator debilitating--hence the name. Fortunately, as I'm sure you are aware; males commit the vast majority of crimes and such other things which would give cause to use such a device.”

The lantern jaw of the Commander fell down around his Adam’s apple as he fumbled for his words. His eyes shown more whitely, revealing a state of mute dumbfoundedness.

“Men hang out,” quipped Moriarty, dryly. “They’re naughty bits dangle, and naughty bits are sensitive.”

“Sonuvabitch,” the Commander finally answered. “Sonuvabitch. I don’t believe it!”

Moriarty shrugged her shoulders, looking down, more interested in her invention than with Stryker’s protest.

Stryker took two steps toward the machine and was about to reach out to examine it more closely.

“Careful, Commander,” cautioned the Doctor. “It’s still in the experimental stage. The controls are sensitive. Though not as sensitive as some things…”

Stryker noted with raging effrontery the Doctor’s eyes were focused clearly on his groin when she added this final comment.

“Bullshit!” he roared. “Bullshit!” He paced around the lab a few steps, reddening, putting his hands angrily at his hips.

Impatient, but seeing she had to demonstrate further before her ignorant, chauvinistic Commander could accept a new embarrassing reality provided by science, Doctor Moriarty called Sgt. Davies back into the room and turned the machine back on. Upon entering, Moriarty instructed the female Sergeant to stand in front of the machine. The bulky, pillowy Sergeant did so at once.

“Not only is the sergeant closer to the beam of the disgroinificator, she has the added handicap of not having the beam have to pass through glass—although it has not been determined if this has any mitigating effect and frankly, the inchoate hypothesis is that it does not.” The Sergeant stood in front of the machine, her camouflage shirt bulging at a few of the straining buttons. She stood and she smiled. She turned around. She turned around again. Stryker’s mortification momentarily abated as his eyes fixed on the rounded rump of the Sergeant, jiggling as she stepped in circles. Okay, so he’d felt that mass of meat one time, felt it in the palm of his hand. He reminded himself of the time he’d reached out around his desk and grabbed it right there in his office when she was delivering a memorandum and he’d shaken it and felt it in all its rounded glory. Davies didn’t file a sexual harassment suit—she was more of a mind to kick his ass right there. Her mistake was in voicing this, in verbally excoriating a commanding officer. And the two had come to a kind of truce about the whole affair. Nothing was happening.

Clearly, Davies was enjoying this. She raised the palms of her hands to the ceiling, smile widening, as if to say, “See, this is nothing.”

“See for yourself, Commander. The machine is set to maximum volume.”

“This is crap!” bellowed Commander Stryker, who could take no more. “You’re not gonna fool me with these parlor tricks. Look, I know I’ve given you gals a lot of shit over the past year, but come on—you’re puttin’ me on, right?”

“I’m afraid not, Commander,” said the Doctor, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, come on!” said Stryker, vehemently, and he stepped over where Sgt. Davies was standing and, eschewing decorum, physically pushed the sergeant out of the way. Instantly his angry demeanor changed drastically.

“Oh-HO-oh-HO-oh-HO-ohhhhhh!”

Commander Stryker’s entire body went stiff and his chin lifted toward the ceiling, exposing a filigree of flaring, straining neck veins. A split second later his knees buckled and clocked clumsily together as curled downward into a standing fetal position, both hands cupped to his groin. A moment later he was kissing linoleum, fetal style.

Removing the chips of wood under the beam end of the disgroinificator, focusing the perimeter of the invisible beam downward at the floor, Doctor Moriarty mused, “What do you think, Sergeant, should we turn it off?”

Commander Stryker writhed on the floor like a dying bug under a magnifying glass on a hot summer’s day.

“Oh-HO-oh-HO-oh-HO-ohhhhhh!”

“Not yet,” snapped the sergeant, standing over her sexually harassing superior.

“Not just yet.”

Part Two (revised)

By hughgee

It looked and sounded like a big black UPS van screeching to a halt outside the perimeter of squad cars all gathered ‘round the Ebor City First National Bank, but was instead S.W.A.T., that city’s finest of the finest.

The rear door slid open with purpose and haste, out jumped seven black-suited, body-armored S.W.A.T. troopers, scoping the perimeter, weapons drawn, securing the grounds around them.

“Hut-hut, hut-hut, hut-hut, hut-hut,” every one of them jabbered, in syncopated follow-the-leader unison. Every last man of them was slender and lithe, but then the beat cops and the ranking detective on scene couldn’t help noticing they were a little too slim, a little too hippy, most of the hair too long and flowing, one of them way too busty—these seven were in fact women. All of them.

“What the hell?” murmured one uniformed officer who, like the others, was crouched behind his squad car

“They’re all chicks!” exclaimed another in bewilderment, from behind the protection of his open driver’s side squad car door.

Some 30 feet away from the flashing red and blue lights of the encircling squad cars, the last one out the back of the van left with the more measured, commanding gait of an obvious leader of men—or women, as the case appeared to be. She strode up and down the perimeter set up by her “hutting” serious subordinates, surveying the scene. A miniature Sophia Loren, sultry, with shorn locks and bulging thighs, she had the prominent Italian-ish hook nose and prominent cheek bones, and incisive, inquisitive eyes which squinted in the afternoon Ebor City sun. But her obvious rank and demeanor contrasted sharply with her physiognomy—she was easily the smallest of the eight head-swiveling, gun-toting women, standing five feet if she was lucky. She couldn’t have tipped the scales much beyond a hundred and ten pounds without body armor, and most of that probably from her noticeably muscular legs and slightly protuberant breasts.

“Nice ass,” said one mustachioed, cowering police officer.

“What ass—it’s all legs,” commented his partner from the other side of their parked black and white.

POW! POW-KaPOW!

Gun shots from inside the bank; cops crouching, cringing, clinging tightly to their firearms, holding them close to their bodies and muttering desperate expletives to themselves. The small, full-lipped S.W.A.T. commander stood straight, unflinching, flanked by the other members of her imposing but unmistakably feminine squad.

“Over here! S.W.A.T.! Over here and get down!” urged the plain clothes detective in the trench coat behind the unmarked Oldsmobile.

“Relax, detective,” the small S.W.A.T. commander hailed, and then she too crouched and nimbly ambled over, sandy bob-cut bouncing, stopped behind the red Olds and attempted to get the low down from the unnerved detective, who struggled not to stutter as he informed her of the situation.

“G-g-got four ass-assailants, maybe five. Botched bank job. Hostages—15, maybe 20. C-c-clerks and c-c-customers alike. G-g-g--”

POW! POW!

More shots rang out from the bank.

The detective winced and let the full weight of one shoulder collapse against the beige, velour inside driver’s side door of the Olds. He felt himself suddenly pushed, and--“Pull yourself together!” S.W.A.T. commander Littiani demanded, crouching over him, grabbing the oversized lapels of the detective’s trench coat in her tiny, hard-knuckled fists as he slid onto his back on the pavement behind the car door. Her intensely-tendoned wrists hadn’t the strength to shake him rag-doll style as she would’ve liked, but she did her authoritative best, grabbing and pulling, straddling him, size 5 black boots acting like bookends, pinned to his hips. “Weapons—what about weapons?! What’re we dealing with?!”

“Oh, man—they’re really loaded down. Couple of AKs, p-p-plenty of other smaller caliber. Shit, they got a gatlin gun in there—I don’t know! Really got us pinned down.”

“Shit,” muttered commander Littiani, glancing over her shoulder at one of her girls.

POW! Ka-POW!

“What?! Don’t you guys know what to do?” yelled the detective, nearly hysterical.

“Shut up,” said Littiani disdainfully.

“You’ll never get me, copper!” came the hackneyed cry from inside the bank. Then, “Ha-ha! I always wanted to say that, you bastards!”

But Littiani was still distractedly eyeballing the same shapely S.W.A.T. trooper to her rear. The blond with breasts unmistakably too large for her frame had a hand fumbling and self-groping her chest underneath the black body armor.

“Miller!” snapped Littiani in piercing alto. ‘You got an itch, sergeant?!”

“My tit—fell—out,” she answered apologetically, standing, bending, hopping.

Looked like a buxom diver adjusting her bikini underneath a wetsuit.

“Get your sweet ass down and mind that perimeter!” yelled her commander. “Get it down or I’ll pop you a new asshole in your forehead. You won’t have to worry about those assholes in there.”

“Yes, commander,” said the busty S.W.A.T. sergeant, sheepish and red-faced, though more from the groping and stooping than from the commander’s reproval. Whispering the word “Bitch” to herself, she shut one eye and fixed the other back inside the gun site.

POW! POW!

“Shit!” shrieked the prone and detective in a high and terrified falsetto. His eyes blazed frantic and desperate, looking up at Littiani, still straddling over him in her own protective crouch. “I call for S.W.A.T. back-up; they send me a bunch of broads.”

“Candy-ass!” the S.W.A.T. commander exclaimed, and unceremoniously drove a diminutive and bony fist into his groin, eliciting a muffled “Ooof!” from the prostrate detective, putting an end to his hysterics and rendering him completely quiet.

“There. That’ll give you something else to worry about.” She left the detective on his back, wide-eyed and mute, rolling over on one side into a fetal position, both hands cupping his stricken groin. Athletically ambling away, carefully ducking, she began to confer with the other members of her squad.

“Well, what d’you make of it, Harrison?” she asked of a long-haired red head with beautiful Nicole-Kidman-ivory skin which contrasted sharply with the black armor body suit and the black of her level M-16.

“You know what I think.”

The two shared a serious and knowing look.

“Little Miss Man-Stopper?” asked the commander.

“You know it,” answered Harrison.

“Miller!” yelled the commander.

“Bring up the bitch from hell!”

“Got it,” said Miller.

Female S.W.A.T. members looked at each other encouragingly.

“Now you’re talking!” one of them in the ranks let out.

Others murmured approval. They relished this. Things were about to get interesting. Sergeant Miller, bosom jostling, bounded behind the S.W.A.T. van and retrieved an ordinary looking black suitcase, bringing it up crouching to the little commander, but now escorted by the stiffly-crouching driver of the S.W.A.T. van, a strapping, grizzled-haired man of about 40. The four of them, Littiani, the breasty long-haired Miller, Harrison the ivory-toned red head, and the newly arrived male S.W.A.T. member all crouched behind a squad car on the outskirts of the perimeter.

“Lt. Hanley, what are you doing here?” asked Littiani, taking the briefcase from the blond sergeant.

“United States Cavalry, at your service.” He had a deep, raspy baritone.

“Lt., this is our fight.”

“I’m still S.W.A.T., commander,” said the burly Hanley. His voice may have been the result of cigars and whisky, but his body was the result of weight-lifting, beef, and strange. “I’m in this too, ‘least till the Fat Lady sings.”

He was referring to the fact that he was retiring soon—within the month, in fact. He was also referring to the fact that male S.W.A.T. officers were, for no apparent reason, somewhat of a dying breed. All the young recruits seemed to be female. Academy policy. Mind-boggling. Ridiculous. Oh well, what could you do? No accounting for bureaucracies. At least he was almost out. He’d have a pension, go fishing on week days, maybe do a bit of traveling.

But until this month was up he was still S.W.A.T. No denying that. Still, it bothered him all to hell, the past year or so, this taking orders from women ten years his junior and all that crap. What the hell was happening to S.W.A.T., anyway?

“Hanley, get out of here. Your job is to drive, that’s all.” Littiani was matter-of-fact in her rejection of his offer to help. He was determined to go out with a bang, do something a tad bit heroic to close out what was, in fact, a darn near illustrious career. “Little lady, I got more experience in my left nut than you’ll ever have for another decade or so on the force. Gimme a break, huh? Now tell me where you want me.”

“I want your ass in that van, Lt.”

“What’s your problem, anyway?” he demanded.

“Law enforcement doesn’t need you anymore,” said Littiani distractedly. She was opening the suitcase and extracting a black box, the approximate size and dimensions of which resembled a VCR, but with a lens-like extension piece where you’d otherwise put the movie in. She lifted it out and seemed to stroke it a little too admiringly. “You’re a dinosaur, Hanley,” she finished.

“Set it up,” said Miller.

“Yeah, let’s get this thing over with,” added Harrison.

“What is that?” asked Hanley.

POW! POW! Came more shots from the bank.

Littiani was busy setting the device atop the hood of the squad car, attentive to point the “nozzle” or whatever lens that is towards the bank itself. She was turning dials on the back of it, flipping a couple of switches. “Your worst nightmare,” she said, in feminine desultory monotone.

From the bank window where the shots had been fired came a muffled moan of a male voice, “Ohhhhh….Ohhhh…”

“Okay, it’s on. We’re go!” shouted Littiani, standing up. All S.W.A.T. members did the same, but when Hanley did it, Littiani turned on him.

“What’re you doing?! Get down!”

“What the hell’s your problem?” asked Hanley, greatly angered now.

Littiani had no time for this. Whirling, she yelled over to the police around the perimeter that her S.W.A.T. girls were going in.

“Not without me, you ain’t,” insisted the stubborn Hanley, jaw protruding, jaw muscles clenched, gritting a mouthful of nicotine-stained teeth.

With a wave of her arm, one of the brunettes, a S.W.A.T. trooper surnamed Maccato came forward, took over manning the machine, while the rest of Littiani’s team took off towards the bank, dodging and weaving in and out of cars and trees and bank drop-off boxes, snapping out staccato cadences.

“Hut-hut, hut-hut, hut-hut, hut-hut,”

Littiani lingered a moment longer, impatiently extracting something else from the open suitcase on the pavement at her feet. Hanley noticed for the first time the outside of the suitcase had embossed upon it, in stencil-font gold letters, the words “ANaLWiMP DISGROINIFICATOR, U.S. B.A.T.F.”

It was heavy, apparently quite heavy, though not nearly so large as the VCR looking thing. At any rate, it was heavy enough to require her setting her M-16 down, then lifting it out of the box with both hands. “All right,” she said, standing, handing it over to Hanley. “Here. Wear this.”

Hanley reached out a big hand and the thing Littiani dropped into it nearly took his arm off. It was a good thing he hadn’t collected his weapon yet, for his arm dipped two feet before he caught the thing using both hands and brought it back up with some effort. The thing was black and concave shaped, like a pharmacist’s mortar and pestle without the pestle and just as thick, but with extended flat and straight out on one side for a couple of inches.

“What the hell’s this?” he said.

“A lead cup. If you’re going in there,”—Littiani pointed into the bank—“you’re going to need it.”

“What?” he said, derisively but completely at a loss to her meaning.

“Shove that thing in your pants,” she insisted. “It came with the model, part of the weapons system, in the case of retrieval of a male VIP hostage.”

Littiani looked over to the bank. “But I don’t suppose the president’s in there.”

Hanley held the thing out in front of him two-fisted like a shot putter at rest. “Commander Littiani, I must confess, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Littiani, nostrils flaring with impatience, gestured toward the disgroinificator. “I’ll keep it simple. That thing blows out sounds waves that make a guy feel like he got kicked in the balls. It doesn’t affect women. The sound waves can’t penetrate lead. That’s the only thing. So get it on or get in the van and get the hell outta the way.”

Hanley was speechless. He stood there, amazed and annoyed, watching Littiani take off towards the bank, taking the same hide and seek route as her other S.W.A.T. members a moment ago.

Hanley dropped the ridiculously bulky lead cup on the asphalt and followed her, but as soon as he rounded the squad car he dropped down to his knees. He had wandered into the beam of the disgroinificator and had actually blanked out for a split second, and now he found himself having succumbed to a great surprise and vaguely nauseating abdominal discomfort, and he was on his knees, both hands clutching his ringing testicles, gasping for his next breath.

Hanley was panting for breath. “Hey,” he grunted feebly to the disappearing Littiani. “I don’t hear nuthin’.”

She heard him but didn’t turn around, only deigning to shout out her answer and then disappear completely through a window of the bank previously broken by bullets: “Inaudible,” she said. “Think dog whistles.”

Hanley, after a few seconds of doing nothing but catching his breath and waiting for the pain to abate, finally crawled away, back around the back of the squad car. Reaching down with both hands, then stopping to loosen his fly, then resuming lifting the lead cup with both hands, he clumsily shoved the cup down into his underwear. But here another mishap occurred as, once the cup got past the elastic of his underwear, into the loose-knit pocket which held his package, he made the mistake of letting go a second too quickly and the lead cup dropped about an inch and a half, pinching one testicle between the cup and his thigh. At this he emitted an “Ooof” and fell to his elbows, then curled up into a fetal position, the next 30 seconds of his life and career being totally taken from him, absorbed as he was with a temporary but single-minded devotion of the status of his once more buffeted balls.

Inside the bank, things couldn’t be going any easier, any more routine for the female S.W.A.T. team. Five male assailants, all wearing rubber Richard Nixon masks—the vulgar Nixon masks that morph into a dick and balls at the ends of the bulbous nose and jowly hanging cheeks—were down and out, gone fetal, moaning and groaning to be taken in, to be taken to jail, to be taken anywhere away from the pain. Commander Littiani and her women took their time about it but were happy to oblige them, but first, they took care to escort all the female hostages out of the bank.

The operation wasn’t totally “clean”, however. Usage of the disgroinificator rarely was: the female hostages, of varying ages, arm in arm with the female S.W.A.T. members, were very concerned about husbands and boyfriends and grandfathers—fellow hostages but who were, like the male culprits of the whole mess, plastered to the ground in moaning, agonizing, gut-wrenching pain.

“Please—please—help him! Help my husband! Something’s wrong,” said one woman hostage.

“We’ll take care of him,” the busty sergeant Miller said, sympathetically.

“He’s all right.”

“What’s happening? What’s wrong with my dad?” one little girl said.

“He’s okay. He’s gonna be okay,” sergeant Harrison assured her, leading her out of the bank into safety.

When all the female hostages were out of the bank, the disgroinificator still doing it’s gut-wrenching, scrotum-invading, pulsating, throbbing-nerved, nauseating worst, Littiani and the others turned to handcuff the fetal assailants, then to signal for trooper Maccato to turn off the disgroinificator to end the crippling discomfiture of the poor fallen male hostages. It was dirty work, it was unfortunate work, Littiani thought, but it had to be done in this order, if you didn’t want anything to go wrong.

As Littiani herself, M-16 strapped behind her, straddled one behemoth of a bank robber, removed his dick and balls mask, then struggling to force his weakened, nut-clutching limbs behind his back in order to hand cuff him, she heard a shout. A baritone shout--she had never heard before within the destructive, invisible beam such a shout of firmness from the male voice.

Wheeling around, she saw the big Hanley, strutting toward her, slowly and awkwardly, wide-legged like a cowboy with saddle sores, doubtless in accommodation of the massive, cumbersome, 10-pound cup of lead in his shorts, sheltering his manly privates.

“I don’t know what the hell this is all about,” Hanley bellowed when he finally lumbered up close to Littiani, stepping over the body of one fetal fallen male after another, “but if you think you’re gonna take all the credit for nabbing these guys, you got another thing coming. I’m retiring next month. Cut me some slack. Lemme go out on top, eh little Miss Litt?”

Littiani waited for him, waited until he was right up next to her, right up until he could look right down at her, towering over her, grinning and confident.

“Hey! Don’t you leave when I’m talking to you, missy.” Hanley glared, pointed, then relented with the finger in her face and just grinned and winked. “You got that, honey pie?”

“Oh, brother,” Littiani said, not even angry, just bored and out of patience, her pretty hand acting on its own, taking advantage of his added height which made it that much more difficult to see what she was doing down there. By the time he felt it, it was too late: fumbling for a second at his greatly distended crotch, lodging her fingernails just behind the cup, all she had to do was lift. Just an inch, but that’s all it took. Hanley felt his nuts fall out of the cup, like eggs falling off a kitchen cabinet in slow motion, and the slow smashing of the sexually-biased sound waves seeped in osmosis-style through the thin skin of his scrotum, a rising wave of nausea welling up into his diaphragm, rising, rising, crushing, crushing.

“Oh-OH-oh-OH-oh-Ohohoooooahahhhh…”

“What’s the matter, Lt.?” the little commander asked calmly. “Hm?”

Hanley stood rigid, chin to the ceiling, quivering, then convulsing, looking as though a stick had suddenly been shoved up his rectum.

“Oh-OH-oh-OH-ohhhh…”

Littiani, hands on hips, relishing the moment, teased the big man mercilessly.

“Awww, what’s-a-matter, macho man—cat got your balls?”

“Oh—oh—OHHH.”

“Oh,” she parroted, in mock sympathy.

Hanley saw floor, he saw boots, he saw size 5 black boots.

And then one of the boots disappeared and then he felt it planted on the top of his exposed hip as he lay on his side in a fetal position.

Littiani pushed a few times, playfully toying with him, then said, in a child-like voice he’d never heard from the brassy little hard-assed babe: “Weaker sex.”

He heard the other girls of the S.W.A.T. team laugh. And there was nothing he could do. Except retire. He was, after all, a dinosaur; or perhaps, with this aching pouch, an endangered marsupial.